Jackson Free Press

There's never a slow news week in Jackson, Miss., and last week was no exception. Here are the local stories JFP reporters brought you in case you missed them:

1. A Mississippi mother of two took on the state Legislature Thursday in a battle over school funding and won.
2. Thursday morning's escape of four men from the downtown Jackson Detention Center came just days after members of the Jackson City Council discussed the city building its own jail.
3. Nearly two months have passed since City of Jackson Department of Public Works Director Kishia Powell brought the water-meter installation project, the centerpiece of the City's $91 million contract with Siemens, to a grinding halt over concerns about quality control.
4. Sociologists and the community activists who rallied to keep the Terry Road Kroger open have a phrase for the phenomenon that could befall the neighborhood that formerly housed the Kroger: food deserts.
5. Liz Sharlot, a spokeswoman for the Mississippi Department of Health, said Mississippi cities do not necessarily need to sign an emergency declaration to apply for one of the low-interest MSDH loans.
6. Mississippi lawmakers voted Monday to borrow $450 million for a range of needs. As usual, there's very little for the city of Jackson's legislative agenda, which included funding for public-safety, payment-in-lieu of taxes for state buildings and other requests.
7. With Bryant's vow to undermine the ACA, the feds concluded that a state-run exchange was untenable. In January 2013, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius turned down Mississippi's application to run its own exchange, the only state she denied.
8. Stylist Patty Watson is resurrecting the spirit of Tangle Boutique and Salon in Fondren and following late owner Brian Brower's vision with the recently opened D'Tangled.
9. At Monday's meeting of the Budget Committee, council members got a look at the city's budget health for the first quarter of the current fiscal year.
10. Having spent nearly a half-century fighting against "the tyranny of good taste," cult filmmaker, actor, writer and artist John Waters has managed to earn fame and respect of the fully above-ground variety without losing any of his subversive sensibilities.

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